Mr. Martin Fraser:

They operate completely independently, although the Constitutional Convention and the Citizens' Assembly were both paid for from our Vote and substantially staffed by civil servants from the Department of the Taoiseach. The secretary of the convention and the secretary of the assembly would have been assigned by me, although, after that, I do not go near them because of the nature of their work. It was effectively civil servants from the Department of the Taoiseach who designed and ran both of those.